Sherlock and Molly - Voices in a Blue Room
by Tessaray
Summary: Molly has helped Sherlock through a suicide, a crisis and now an illness...and he realizes an important truth. Set about six months after Reichenbach Falls. Angst, explicit sex. Sherlolly.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

Sherlock rolls his brow on the cool, soothing tile of the tunnel wall. He's been walking for too long beneath the city and this heat, this _ache_ that's engulfing him is a product of exertion. Nothing more. The fever from his meningitis has long since broken... twelve hours ago, maybe thirteen, maybe more... he can't be certain. Time has been strangely elusive... amorphous. The hotel room they'd kept him in had a digital clock on the nightstand... its red numbers had seared his brain, so they'd taken it away. The room before that, the blue bedroom, had no clock at all.

Drifting... his mind is drifting, struggling to pin down thoughts… which tube station is this… yes, Russell Square. He should be at Molly's well before dawn. He tunes in to her voice again, light, sweet… background now, like a soundtrack to his journey through the tunnels. He prefers it this way—low, quiet—although the musical tone is never objectionable, even when it twines like ivy around his own inner voice in a sort of duet. The words she says are silly; words she'd read to him when he'd been ill and floating between worlds in his delirium. It was irritating at first, that her voice had remained long after she'd gone... persistent, like a mosquito or tinnitus...

But now…

_"NO!"_ he shouts, slaps his hand against the tiled wall and his own bass reverberates, rumbles down the dark track. _Focus_. His mind has become a stranger to him, following knotty trails to illogical conclusions or wandering away altogether, amorphous time passing slowly, maybe passing quickly... it's hard to know as he recalls the feel of her fingers on his skin…

He's gone away again, he realizes, and hauls himself back with a curse, disgusted by the tenderness echoing in his chest.

Exertion. That's all. Contaminated food. Bacterial meningitis.

Isabel had found him sniffing pipes in a disused access tunnel beneath Finsbury Park Station… was it Isabel? Yes, the one with short grey hair and nose rings. In his paranoia, he had tried to strangle her with his bare hands. Fortunately, he'd been weak. So weak. How absurd to ignore the obvious symptoms of illness in favor of untangling Moriarty's web... in favor of coming back to life.

_Possible brain damage if left untreated._

Sets of large hands, no-nonsense hands had removed him from the tunnel at Isabel's direction and out into blistering cold. Then he was indoors...

He drifts away again, the dim tunnel fading... and the memory of the first room rises around him. He's feverish... Molly's voice envelopes him, eases him. He is distantly intrigued by her presence, but can't remember why it should seem strange. He's in a child's bedroom, a boy's, and the world is suddenly vivid: Robin's-egg blue walls, a poster of the table of elements, shelves lined with toy microscopes and models of pirate ships, the colorful spines of books. His feet hang over the edge of the too-small bed, except when he needs to curl in on himself to vomit. Cool fingers probe his overheated skin and a light, stern voice issues orders. He hears mumbles of hesitation, then a one-word shout that jolts him closer to consciousness:

_"NOW!"_

Blonde hair, tousled from interrupted sleep, and Molly's face swims into focus. Her brow is furrowed, her bottom lip swollen and bloody. His eyes must fix on the spot because she touches it and says, "You had a convulsion."

"No hospital," he tells her, but had meant to say something else.

She reads to him... for hours, or perhaps it is days in the amorphous time. Children's stories. The Hundred Acre Wood, the battle for Toad Hall... her voice is warm, musical, threading through his tangled fever dreams with familiar words about a rabbit who wants to be real, words that look like emerald sparkles he feels compelled to chase and catch but can't, because he is missing his hind legs. He wants so much to tell Molly about the sparkles and about his frustration that he can't reach them. He's certain she'll understand... but the words never reach his lips.

A pinch in his forearm and he is shivering in a cold bath, naked but for a sodden towel over his pelvis. An IV drip hangs from the shower rod above him. The room is dim but he can discern Molly crouching nearby, speaking to him in medical jargon he knows he should understand. She watches him for a response that never comes. Her clothes are wet and when she rises, she gasps and lays a protective hand on her ribcage just below her right breast. Suddenly the bare lightbulb on the ceiling flares at him, engulfs him in scorching yellow flames, and he hears her shout, _"Turn it off, you idiot!"_ ... before he sinks into blackness.

At some point they move him, Isabel and the sets of no-nonsense hands, because when he awakes again, still dangerously ill but more lucid, he's tucked into an adult-sized bed in a threadbare hotel room with Raga music whining through the walls.

Molly was gone and she didn't come back.

###

Damp cold seeps into his bones, bringing Sherlock back to the tunnel. He gruffly shakes off the memories and moves on, accompanied by distant screeches, the skittering of small claws... and Molly's voice like a lullaby beneath it all...

He jerks to a halt. What station is this… Holborn?

_He should know this!_

Bacterial meningitis. _Possible brain damage if left untreated._

Nausea and cold panic roil his gut. No. _Not now_, not with so much yet to be done. He'd escaped the hotel and the suspicious eyes of his minders on the pretense of needing a shower, had washed the sickness from his mouth, skin, hair. He'd slipped out the bathroom window after he'd dressed and ghosted the word _IDIOTS_ into the fading mist on the mirror with one long finger. But maybe he'd left too soon...

_Possible brain damage..._

Is his mind truly impaired or are confusion and such... _weakness_... simply the last gasps of the illness? John would know. He may be, like the rest of them, a vacuous imbecile about most things, but he's an expert on Sherlock.

Can't go to John.

That leaves Molly.

He tunes in to her voice, sing-songing just below his muddled mental stream, notices the stubborn, irritating _ache_... and when he begins to follow it back to its source, he recalls with crystal clarity why he was so surprised by her presence in his sickroom.

She loathes him.

###

Resting now on cold concrete. Holborn Station, confirmed. He'd nipped above, stole a bottle of water and two bags of crisps; won't touch anything that's not packaged up now, not since calculating that it was a nicked kebab that did him in. The January air was bracing, slapped and woke him a bit before he returned below.

And as he eats and drinks, Molly is going on about the Velveteen Rabbit. This… thing, this _ache_… he'd managed to trace it back to its first appearance—when he'd asked for her help with his 'suicide'. Her eyes had been so fierce, trusting, devoted, and he'd realized then that she meant more to him than was… convenient. Yet, he told her everything. They schemed together, worked out details and contingencies, weighed ramifications... and when she meekly touched his sleeve, he didn't pull away.

She hesitated, chewed her lip like she meant to confess a secret. "You'll want to go to John," she'd said, and he'd felt a strange flush of... disappointment.

"It's like... his pain will call out to you. And you'll be desperate to ease it, but you can't."

He'd wondered briefly how she knew about such things. And he's sure he looked at her like she was mad; what she was describing could never happen. He was certain. But she'd taken his hand, fixed him to the spot with clear, fervent eyes.

"Ring me when it happens, and I'll come."

And sure enough, one critical night she'd come to him in a dismal room in Southwark and kept vigil as he engaged in a battle as fierce as any he'd fought with his other addictions. She'd listened as he ranted, kept a respectful distance as he wept... and she kept repeating, "You can't tell John, his life depends on it." Said it again and again and again until he found a way to accept that simple truth he'd known all along.

And he'd realized then, as the storm abated, that she had _seen_ him. Defenseless. Exposed. And that was... _intolerable_.

So he had set about quite methodically, quite viciously, taking his revenge. Like her, he knew how to wield a scalpel of sorts, knew just where and how deeply to cut. Not once did he raise his voice or alter his tone; he simply told her all about herself that night, all that he'd _observed_ of her in their time together, being sure to lay bare and carve into the tenderest, most sheltered and vital of her fragile emotional and psychological flesh. He'd watched her face turn ashen and her body slowly curl into a ball. When she'd begged him to stop, he'd obliged, and paused on his way out the door only long enough to hear her run to the toilet and vomit.

And he had smiled.

###

He stuffs one empty, one full bag of crisps into the plastic take-away bag he's been carrying, lets out a sigh that floats away into the tunnel's dimness, hugs himself deeper into his coat. He thinks of the blue bedroom, the too-short bed, the innocence of the place and of the boy who must occupy it, turns up the volume on Molly's voice, as crystalline as his own thoughts had once been.

'_Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit._ _'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.'_

Molly. So awkward. Fragile. He recognizes her, more than she'll ever know. He can imagine her as a child, huddled in a pink bedroom decorated with cats and daisies, mortified by herself, by the dawning, hideous awareness that she's so very different... struggling but failing to hide her secrets and finally choosing to hide herself instead.

Molly in her morgue.

Sherlock in his arrogance.

And the thing no one understands about him, even today, is that it's only possible to land his savage remarks because he knows precisely how much they hurt.

_'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'_

He recalls Molly's bloody lip, the way she'd shielded her ribs.

He recalls how triumphant he'd felt that night in Southwark, watching the light fade from her eyes.

"Bollocks," he mutters, and pushes on.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

Not yet dawn, and Sherlock's heart pounds as he stands outside Molly's flat. Her voice is loud in his head again—though still soothing, still sweet—and makes him ache for something he can't name.

He jimmies the lock, let's himself in. Her flat smells of tea roses and kitty litter. The hallway lamp is on and he can see beyond it to the kitchen, and to the small table where Molly sits in a pink bathrobe, watching him.

He freezes in his tracks.

"Tea?" she asks.

"Thank you, no." He steps in and closes the door, turns to her, poised, ramrod straight, as though he has every right to be here.

"You're not through with your antibiotics. Do you mean to kill yourself… again?"

"Isabel?"

"Texted. She says she left a voicemail, but _someone_ seems to have hacked my phone and deleted my messages."

He fingers the burner phone in his pocket.

"Imagine that," he says. "Also, a very dull woman named Christine rang. She'll be round Saturday noon to collect you."

Molly just leans back in her chair, not bothering to look annoyed.

"And _how_ did you know I was coming here?" He inadvertently hits the word 'how' the way John does, and it hurts.

"You're the brilliant detective. You figure it out."

"Ah, but I'm a fraud, remember?"

"I know exactly what you are," she says evenly. "And you're not welcome here."

Sherlock has never witnessed Molly's hostility before, let alone been its focus, and it leaves him disoriented. A cat appears and begins figure-eighting around his ankles. Molly's hair is long and loose around her shoulders, her slender fingers slowly tap a mug of chamomile-scented tea. She is in her element and not remotely thrown by his sudden presence in her flat. She clicks her tongue and the cat gives Sherlock's shin a final rub, stretches elegantly and saunters off.

She watches him a moment longer. "Still." She pushes up from the table. "Isabel said you took the IV gear—"

He holds up and shakes the plastic take-away bag.

"Follow me." She disappears from his sight.

###

It's the same arrangement as before, but he is permitted to keep his clothes on this time. He's perched on the edge of a claw-foot tub, the IV bag hangs from the curved shower rod above him. Molly inserts the needle so smoothly he barely feels it, tapes it down, starts the drip and disappears. He notes the decor; she's certainly partial to florals. He searches for something that might surprise him—a copy of Mein Kampf on the toilet tank, perhaps—but no such luck. She returns with a large glass of water.

"You have to push fluids," she says, handing him the glass. As he reaches for it, he has an impulse to touch her fingers, but she flexes them away.

"Get _bored_, did you?" she says, watching him drain the contents, a fist on her hip. Her voice is tight, clipped, not at all like the voice in his head.

"They were bor-_ing_," he says with a jut of his chin.

"Isabel and Liam saved your life."

"_You_ saved my life. Twice now," he says. "Surprising, given your current state of… pique."

She narrows her eyes at him, starts to speak but he cuts her off.

"Of course, you wouldn't want all our hard work to be in vain." He rummages in his metaphorical bag of tricks and pulls out a smile that has reliably melted her a hundred times in the past.

She rolls her eyes at the effort. "Right. We're done with that." She leans down, places her face level with his and lays a warm hand on his shoulder. He sees himself reflected in her pupils. "I know what you think of me, Sherlock. You told me straight out. And I won't be manipulated by you again."

Part of him leaps with joy at the challenge this statement poses, another part notes that her robe has fallen open enough to reveal her cleavage, but the greater part hears the resolve in her voice, and the hurt behind it.

"Molly—"

She straightens up. "You have everything you need in that bag and you know what to do. Finish this course of antibiotics, yeah? Don't be an idiot. We both know how you detest idiots. And here," she says, tossing him the extra bag of crisps. "Have a snack."

"Those are for you," he drawls. "For your trouble."

"Sherlock, the days of you bribing—," she stops herself, swallows hard and drops her head. When she raises it again, her eyes are wet. "There's only one thing I ever wanted for my _trouble_."

She turns away, her soft hair swinging around her shoulders.

"Where are you going?"

"Bed. Let yourself out when you're done. And I'll be installing a deadbolt tomorrow."

"So, you... hate me, then." He'd known it, but is flooded by a bewildering, bitter sense of loss just the same.

She's halfway out the door, stops, doesn't turn around. "Wasn't that the idea?"

"It was," he admits.

"Nicely played, then," she says quietly.

As she steps over the threshold, he notices that she's wearing little white socks... somehow he finds that unbearably touching.

"Molly Hooper," he says. "Please don't go."


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

Sherlock reminds himself why he's here... it's about his condition, his mind. Nothing else. He selectively reveals his symptoms to Molly, the headaches, fatigue, loss of mental focus and clarity. He avoids articulating any fear or sentiment, watches her face as she synthesizes the information, asks for details he hadn't thought to include, forms hypotheses then discards them quickly. Her manner is intense, incisive and it occurs to him he could be watching a slower-motion version of himself.

He doesn't mention that her soft voice is reciting nursery rhymes in his mind.

But when she kneels down and takes his wrist between gentle fingers, he's lost... the sensation is so deeply comforting that he almost sighs aloud. He'd assumed that when he saw her, when he heard the reality of her voice, the ache would subside... but now it's overwhelming. As she finds his racing pulse, he wills it to slow, gathers small details to center himself: her hair smells of French lavender; her robe is the same pink as her skin when flushed and too large... better suited to a woman two-stone heavier... frayed and pulled tight at the neck. The lapels meet just below her suprasternal notch and he is drawn there, to the steady, gentle movement of her pulse.

She lifts his eyelids to examine his sclera, and he has to struggle not to look away. True or not, he feels that she's demanding something of him.

"You came when I was ill," he says matter-of-factly, but his voice feels thick in his throat. "You read silly children's stories to me."

"You told me you didn't like my Eeyore," she says distantly, moves her fingers to his neck, rotates it gently. He suppresses a shiver.

He casts his mind back, finds that moment amidst the fog of his delirium. "I believe I said it wasn't credible."

She's so close. Once, he had thought her lips were too thin, oddly shaped. Now he finds them fascinating, longs to kiss them, to slide into the warmth of her mouth.

"You did believe my Piglet," she says.

"Most convincing, though hardly a stretch."

She almost smiles at that, then seems to remember. Her eyes remain on his, but their focus slips to someplace inside herself as if she no longer sees him. He feels the change as an almost physical rejection and steels himself, stiffens.

"Why those books, in particular," he says, cold now, accusing. It occurs to him that she was perhaps attempting to infantilize him, to exert power over him.

"It's what you asked for."

Absurd.

But true. He remembers... hears his voice making the request, and feels heat rising in his cheeks. It must have been that blue room, rendering him helpless, vulnerable. Why a child's room with a tiny bed, why not at least a couch... something offering a modicum of dignity? Revenge, of course, to humiliate him.

"Well," she says, finishing her examination and dropping her hands to her lap. "I don't see anything to be concerned about. You need to rest, Sherlock, and finish this course—,"

"Why Isabel's son's room?" he demands harshly.

"I'm sorry?"

"The boy's room. Why did you treat me there?"

"Isabel doesn't have a son, Sherlock, and she doesn't have a room. She's homeless..."

He clenches his jaw. Of course. "Liam's son then, or that enormous Latvian with the paws..."

"Homeless and homeless. Sherlock—," she says, eyeing him. She reaches for his wrist again but he pulls away.

"Where was I taken then?"

"A... a hotel on Stroud Green Road. It was the closest. They said you were ranting on about the... the Balcombe Street Siege or some—"

"No, _before_ then—the blue bedroom, where you read to me." He's growing agitated, his voice rising. That place—the pirate ship, the smell of old books, the too-small bed—were as real as the hard, cold bathtub beneath him now. How can she claim not to remember?

She's shaking her head, her brow furrowed. "You know," she says. "It's not uncommon with bacterial meningitis to... hallucinate—"

"Then where did the books that you read come from," he says, as though scoring the match point. "A child would have those books. I'm not aware of London hotels with copies of The Velveteen Rabbit tucked in the nightstand."

"Sherlock," she says quietly. "I downloaded them... with my e-reader."

The feeling of disorientation rushes back, makes him reel and grasp the rim of the tub for balance. "Yes," he says. "Of course." _Of course_... how obvious. His mind... he'd been certain. Could it have been a hallucination?

She looks up at him with the first real concern he's seen since arriving. It's so familiar, so _welcome,_ that he softens. But he still can't allow her to see him weak... _again_, vulnerable _again_. He will not be that in her eyes.

"Right," he says, straightening his spine. "And I suppose I hallucinated hurting you."

"What?" Her eyes snap wide.

"Here," he says. He tentatively reaches toward the small cut on her lower lip, but she jerks back.

"Oh, yeah, that," she says, a bit flustered, a bit like the old Molly. "That was an accident. A seizure."

"Can you forgive me?" His voice is sonorous in the small room... he sees from her flushed skin and downcast eyes that it affects her. He hadn't intended it as a manipulation, but is relieved to feel some of his former mastery return.

"Sure, no worries," she says. She's still kneeling before him, her hands fisted on her thighs.

And he could manipulate her now; she's quite vulnerable, her manner timid, submissive... provocative. A flurry of scenarios plays through his mind... but he can't pinpoint precisely what he wants.

"I think I hurt you somewhere else, as well," he says, softly, playing for time until he can determine the correct course of action.

He sees her swallow, feels a shift in the room, a warming. Her eyes slowly return to his, but she says nothing.

"Stand up, Molly," he says.

She doesn't move, just searches his face. His heart is pounding... he hopes that she'll do as he says, that she has _forgiven_ him and they can go back to normal, that he can put this crippling bloody confusion and insecurity behind him. But it's also a distinct possibility that she'll tear the IV from his arm and order him out of her flat. As he braces himself, he becomes aware of her voice streaming in his mind... it's the part about nursery magic and shabby velvet noses and being real when someone truly loves you. He winces inwardly.

Molly pushes to her feet, slowly, to stand at her full height. She seems to loom over him, as he has always tried to loom over her, to intimidate, control. But she is just... there, glaring down at him. Molly. Daring him. _Not _loving him... not anymore.

Still, he lifts his arm, realizes the IV line is attached to it, lowers it awkwardly, raises the other one, thinks better of the whole thing and drops that arm, too. She waits, watches. He feels foolish, an emotion he thought he'd left far in the past, and it angers him. He reaches out suddenly with his free hand and lays his palm flat against Molly's side, just below her right breast. He wants to feel her shiver, to hear her breath quicken. But he sees now that that would be the old Molly.

"Oh, that," she says lightly, not reacting to his touch in the slightest. "You were delirious when we were putting you in the bath. The water was so cold that you fought us."

"Of course," he mutters, dropping his hand. "My apologies."

She regards him for a moment. "It's forgotten." Her voice chills him as thoroughly as the memory of the ice bath.

He feels uncharacteristically defeated. The ache is stronger than ever, but he can discern no clear path to easing it. If his mind were focused, functioning properly, he could resolve this dilemma and move on...

Molly doesn't step away, doesn't move, continues to loom. Sherlock glances up at the IV bag to see how soon he can leave. He has no idea how long he's been here... minutes, hours... time is still amorphous, without shape, but he tries to measure it by the gap between the IV drips, the pauses between her small sighs. She is almost stately, studying him... he feels like a slide under a microscope.

Finally she says, "There's a bruise."

Her hands move to the sash of her robe. Sherlock looks quickly into her face, but can read no expression there.

"Would you like to see?"

He hesitates, nods once.

And here is the surprise he'd been looking for... not Mein Kampf on the toilet tank, but her robe slipping from her shoulders to reveal a nightgown of black silk, like water at midnight, sliding over her curves, falling to mid-thigh. He thinks he gasps, probably does because when he looks up again, he sees triumph in her eyes.

She reaches down, takes the hem between her thumb and forefinger. The trembling of her hand, the quickening of her breath, are so slight as to be imperceptible to anyone who hasn't observed her as closely as he has. She lifts the hem slowly to reveal black panties, then the smooth, pale skin of her hips and stomach, stopping just below the gentle swell of her breast. The bruise over her injured ribs is still angry. Impulsively, he raises his fingertips and, without touching her, traces the course of yellow, spreading like a river delta amidst the purple. He can feel her heat.

Surprising himself, he leans in, ghosts his mouth along the same path his fingers had taken, and when he finally allows his lips to graze her, she shudders, violently. He looks up into her flushed face and sees something fierce and primal that he has no word for, but it makes him surge, makes him take the silky black hem and push it up and over her breast, growl as he sucks a taut nipple into his mouth. She sways, gasps and grabs his head as his hands slide up the back of her thighs, pulling her closer. A hard resistance inside him shatters and he's suddenly frantic with _WANT_... a new thing, like fire in his veins, overwhelming his mind... _wanting her,_ to feel, taste, have, all of her, _now_, and it takes him a moment to realize that she's pulling away from him, from his hands and mouth, shoving him back by his shoulders, and shouting...

"What _else did you do_?"

"What what else?" He's wild, confused, buffeted by a furious energy that seems to emanate from her, his empty hands grasping at air.

"You _eviscerated_ me!" she screams.

Her pain and rage are like a mountain falling on him, stunning him senseless. That phrase, in that tone, suddenly and completely obliterates all the sweet music that had been streaming in his mind.

_You eviscerated me._

It echoes and amplifies until it, too, fades... eclipsed by the memory of his own voice—mild, amused, precise—and every clever, savage observation, every malignant word he said to her that miserable night in Southwark. He had crushed her, made her ill... for having the temerity to see the truth of him.

And he had _smiled_.

"Yes," he says, his voice thick with regret. "Yes. I did that."

"And you _enjoyed_ it!"

"Yes," he whispers.

She stares at him, shaking, eyes wide and wet. Her arms are wrapped around herself, the black silk covers her body once more. A dozen unvoiced questions seem to play about her lips, but she asks none of them. The answers don't matter.

"I can't forgive you for that," she says simply.

"I know."

She watches him for a long time as he studies the floor, avoiding her eyes, bereft. He has lost her utterly... even her voice is gone from his mind now and he's alone with his thoughts for the first time in days. He had finally touched her, tasted her, but he had destroyed everything, and now the ache threatens to swallow him whole. Mercifully, she bends over him, removes the tape and IV needle from his arm, and swabs and covers the insertion point with adhesive gauze.

He stands painfully, flexes his arm. He can't imagine why she hasn't fled the room. He finds the courage to meet her eyes... they are filled with unshed tears and she opens and closes her mouth, seeming to struggle with herself. She finally shakes her head and draws a deep breath. When she looks back at him, her tears are flowing freely.

"I hate that I still want you," she says, with such sadness and resignation that he immediately counts this as his hollowest victory.

They stare at each other for a long moment. He wills her to leave, or rage at him again... anything but her grim silence.

"We could—" he begins, and nods awkwardly, hoping to signal that he's available to her, if by some miracle that's what she wants.

"Just don't kiss me," she says. She turns and pads down the hallway to her bedroom in her little white socks.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

It's just before dawn and cold blue light bathes Molly's bedroom. Sherlock barely has time to register the predictably floral decor before she grabs him through his slacks with one hand and tears open his shirt with the other.

Sherlock recognizes this as frantic need, had experienced it himself only moments before, and it rises in him again in response to her urgency. But the cheek she presses to his bare chest is wet and she rakes her nails down his back with a strangled cry of rage. He's never been with someone who actively hates him before, never been with anyone, really, and he's immediately out of his depth.

Molly doesn't want to want this, that much is obvious. He knows how she feels. At first he thought her reluctance to kiss him was due to the meningitis, but now he understands... it's too intimate. And the last thing she seems to want from him is intimacy.

She shoves him back against the wall, drops to her knees and almost before his zipper is down, her mouth is on him, so soft, wet, engulfing, doubling him over with a shock of overwhelming pleasure. He instinctively reaches for her, but she slaps him away. He doesn't have time to prepare himself... she works him so relentlessly with her hands and mouth that it seems only moments before he's shuddering, gasping, clutching at the wall behind him for support, coming hard, shame staining his cheeks. She rises to her feet, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Triumph glistens in her eyes.

"Well," she says, her voice dripping disdain. "That didn't take long."

So, this is to be his punishment... mockery and humiliation, in one of the few areas where he's truly vulnerable. He can put an end to it now, he knows, he can gather up the shreds of his dignity, walk out the door... and most likely never see her again…

He allows her to take his hand and guide him to the center of the room. He's shaken, braces himself as best he can for the next onslaught... but instead, she slides his open shirt back over his shoulders, and begins to slowly undress him. She trails her fingertips lightly, so sensually over each newly-exposed bit of skin that he shivers and sighs in the cold blue light, months of tension, a lifetime of tension, dissolving beneath her touch. Stepping from his slacks and more, he's naked before her... amorphous time passing by degrees... minutes, maybe hours as she circles him at a distance, eyes sliding over his body, lingering here and there, appraising him, her face reflecting such intensity and admiration that he feels himself stir again. She moves so close that her breath brushes his skin, and with soft, warm palms, she maps the terrain of his body... every contour, every plane... as though trying to solve the riddle of his improbable existence.

He longs to hear her speak, but she says nothing.

And then she's behind him, slips her arms around him, whispers her fingertips over his abdomen, the crest of his hipbones, the dip before the swell of his gluteus muscles, long soft strokes on the front of his thighs. She molds herself to his back, her nipples hard through the black silk. Her hands slide up his lean torso to feather through the spray of hair on his chest and he feels her cheek, warm between his shoulder blades. And then she's holding him, fiercely, her palms pressed over his heart, and he feels... _loved_... and it's so good that he drops his head back and moans. And in that instant she releases him, steps away, and the feeling is gone.

"So, you are human after all," she says. "Go lay down."

Flat on his back on her bed now, on sheets scented with her, and she's stroking his cock slowly, licking and biting his neck—so sensitive, and he never knew—stopping whenever he groans or thrusts into her hand... driving him mad. She won't let him touch her, won't let him see her, now wearing the black silk like armor.

"Don't move," she orders when he reaches for her, "Don't you dare move." But he can't hold back anymore, rolls her over roughly, gathers and pins her wrists above her head with one hand, cups her hip with the other and slips his thumb under the waistband of her panties. He forgets, lowers his mouth to kiss her. And then she's fighting him like a wildcat, snarling and kicking until he rolls off, cursing with frustration. She doesn't want him to dominate her in any way, ever again. He gets it.

"What did I say?" she hisses.

And then she shifts up, shoves him back, moves over him until she's straddling his face, soft thighs cradling his cheeks. She grabs a handful of his hair lowers her hips, presses black silk against his lips.

"Now what?" she says, mocking, challenging.

He is startled, doesn't know quite what to do, but he's angry, so he bites her through the silk and she gasps, rocks. His cock leaps and he does it again, finds a particularly hot, wet place behind the thin fabric and focuses there, tonguing and sucking as she sways above him, watching, her hair wild, lips wet and parted. She allows him to cup her bottom, tilt her pelvis and he can reach more of her now. He flattens his tongue to make a long sweep, and when she throws her head back to release a full-throated moan, he feels like he's won an award. He wraps an arm around her thigh and pulls the panties aside, finally dipping his tongue into the soft, fascinating wetness of her.

He groans at the intimacy, and at the violence of her reaction when she grabs his head with both hands, grinds down against his mouth and whispers, "God, yes, I've wanted this, I've wanted you to do this." This voice is new, triggers something deep and unfamiliar inside him and he spreads her roughly with his fingers, molds his mouth to her, licks and sucks, learns her as she rocks her hips. He wills her to speak again, to moan his name in this state, but too soon, too soon she's wild and keening, shattering against his tongue.

Sherlock is immensely proud as Molly unseats herself, thighs trembling, and slides bonelessly down his body. She's dazed, whimpering, and as raw as he's ever seen anyone. She'd done most of the work, but still... he'd made her come. He surges with power at the thought, is frantic for _more_.

She slides her panties down her legs, then off, climbs on top of him, trembling, straddles his hips. He wants to resist suddenly... he's far too unguarded, unmoored, needs to reclaim something of himself before he's swept away completely... but when she takes hold of him, positions him at the wet-hot softness of her opening, he can't keep from thrusting into her hand. She sinks down then, so slowly, engulfs his tip... but no more.

"Oh, you don't know," she whispers from far away. "You don't know." Then she rises up and off, watches his face as she does it again; sinks down, but barely, then up and off, teasing, torturing, never coming remotely close to sheathing him.

What the hell is she playing at? He's fisting the sheets to keep from grabbing her hips and impaling her on his cock. He wants to so badly, but doesn't dare, knows she'll fight him. The seventh time she does it, he's desperate enough to beg.

"Please, Molly,' he gasps. 'Please just...,"

She looks down at him, her eyes dark and liquid, and there's that challenge again.

"Just what, Sherlock?" she says innocently. "Can't you say the naughty word?"

She holds him firm, slowly rotates her hips around his tip, taunting him, angering him, but he has no choice. "Please," he moans. "Please _fuck me_."

And with that she shivers, sinks down fully and sheathes him to the hilt. It's white-hot fucking bliss and he cries out before he can stop himself.

"God, I wish I had all that on tape," Molly gasps. "I'd never stop playing it."

He remembers then, despite the intense sensations in his body... tunes in to his mind, listens, but there's silence where her voice should be. He is throbbing inside her, and while she hasn't moved yet, she's vividly hot and tight around him. He reaches up, slides his hands into her hair. He doesn't mean to tell her.

"Your voice was playing in my head," he whispers, his own voice rough and foreign to his ears. "For days you were there."

Her hands splay out on his chest, gently press him down. It's fully dawn now, and her pale skin glows like fire.

"And now you're gone," he says.

Her eyes open, moist, unfocused, and sweep up his body to his face.

"I'm gone," she echoes.

She finally moves, slowly, quivering with hushed moans, and it's so good he can't recall why he wanted to resist, can't imagine wanting to be anywhere else. He should shut up now, just rock his hips, let her hair flow between his fingers like water... but things want to be said.

"Don't go."

"Sshh, stop talking."

She moves her hands to his face, caressing like a whisper, and his eyes slip closed, listening to her touch.

He doesn't have words of this kind. He has thousands of words at his command, in many languages, but not this kind, that come from somewhere other than the mind.

It's exquisite how slowly she's moving, embracing him inside her, and he opens his eyes and watches her with wonder. Despite all the hours spent in her company, despite all his clever, savage observations, he realizes that he doesn't know her at all... this woman with Molly's face, rocking hypnotically above him, wholly self-possessed and far beyond him in a place he's never been. He allows his fingertips to drift from her hair, to trail gently over her brow, her flushed cheeks, the soft, reddened swell of her lips, the curve of her jaw, and come to rest lightly on the thrumming pulse at the base of her throat.

He makes a decision... he wills his own touch to be his voice, to tell her the things he has no words for... about aching, about regret, about wanting to go back to a time before pain transformed into cruelty.

And he suddenly knows like a slap that, of course, she was right... there was no blue room with the too-short bed. But it wasn't a hallucination. It was a memory... blurred by illness, but a memory nonetheless... of his childhood bedroom before he was sent away to school, a sanctuary where he was safe and whole and happy, and shame had no place. And her voice, Molly's voice, had led him there. He knows this is psychologically significant, knows it has opened something within him, although he doesn't fully understand it... and he would ponder but for her soft moans, her sweet rocking above him. Later, later... when amorphous time has regained its shape... Molly will understand.

She will help _him_ understand.

Molly's eyes are on him as he touches her, wary, watchful, as though listening to his silent voice. He notes the increase of her pulse beneath his fingertips... and suddenly something changes. She smiles gently, her eyes shining. She bends, reaches for the hem of her black silk nightgown. He moves his hands to allow her to draw it slowly up her body, and off. She glows, so beautiful in the dawn light that she overwhelms his eyes, his mind.

Sherlock understands the eloquence of this gesture, the blessed _forgiveness_ of it, and is flooded with gratitude, relief... and something tender and poignant he can't name that makes him rise up, slide his arms around her soft body and hold her tightly. But resistance rises inside him again, an unwillingness to admit to or let her see this new... _weakness_... and he has very nearly mastered himself when he feels her arms cradle him, her warm cheek against the crown of his head. She lifts his face to hers then, and she finally allows him to kiss her... slowly, deeply... and as he is enveloped in the nourishing warmth he has been missing since that miserable night in Southwark, he realizes the ache is gone.

With tears stinging his eyes, he gathers her in his arms, shifts his hips, and rolls her gently onto her back. He's not sure how to arrange his body at first, how to hold his weight, how to move, but she shows him by wrapping her legs around his hips, drawing him deep and riding him slowly from beneath until he understands.

Still, he's shaking, a raw nerve, overwhelmed by emotions he's ridiculed in others, has refused to acknowledge in himself... but he's allowing them now, safe inside her in this timeless place.

"You love me," she says, watching his face, caressing his lips with wonder.

"Yes," he whispers, nearly lost in the sensations of his body, of Molly beneath him, soft and trembling, clinging to him, loving him. "But first, I had to go to the blue room."

"But, Sherlock—"

"Shhh, I know," he murmurs.

And they rock together, loving, silent voices speaking... saying everything that needs to be said.

_The End_


End file.
